BARBARISM • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Barbarism

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/bˈɑrbərˌɪzəm/ Listen

noun

Barbarism n.

An uncivilized state or condition; rudeness of manners; ignorance of arts, learning, and literature; barbarousness.

A barbarous, cruel, or brutal action; an outrage. "A heinous barbarism... against the honor of marriage."

An offense against purity of style or language; any form of speech contrary to the pure idioms of a particular language. See Solecism. "The Greeks were the first that branded a foreign term in any of their writers with the odious name of barbarism."

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Etymology of 'Barbarism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Barbarism" Quotes from Famous Books

... the Diction becomes distinguished and non-prosaic by the use of unfamiliar terms, i.e. strange words, metaphors, lengthened forms, and everything that deviates from the ordinary modes of speech.—But a whole statement in such terms will be either a riddle or a barbarism, a riddle, if made up of metaphors, a barbarism, if made up of strange words. The very nature indeed of a riddle is this, to describe a fact in an impossible combination of words (which cannot be done with the real names for things, but can be with their metaphorical substitutes); e.g. 'I ...

— The Poetics • Aristotle

... visual art to sink into a feeble barbarism seems to have existed always and to have asserted itself whenever we lost touch with the centre. The earliest English art, early Saxon sculpture, is good; it is a respectable part of that great Byzantine tradition which from the middle of the eighth to the middle of the ...

— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... law, or of its machinery, hardly excuses a lapse into barbarism," he protested. "The discharged employee, in the case you are supposing, might hold himself justified in shooting at me; but if I should shoot back and happen to kill him, it would be murder. We've got to stand for something, Mr. Gridley, ...

— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... stages of their development, particularly true is it of the Lombards,[4] a wild tribe of the Suevic stock, whose few appearances in history, previous to their invasion of Italy, are connected only with the fiercest strife and the rudest forms of barbarism. History seems to have proved that tradition has maligned the Vandal; the Goth can boast a ruler raised at the centre of Eastern civilization and refinement; but the Lombard of the invasion can never appear as other than the rude barbarian ...

— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams

... the Baptistery is the most restful place in Florence; and this is rather odd considering that it is all marble and mosaic patterns. But its shape is very soothing, and age has given it a quality of its own, and there is just that touch of barbarism about it such as one gets in Byzantine buildings to lend ...

— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

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